More than 4 decades later, none of the other manufacturers come close to Toyota still. Why?

Because the change is one in how you understand the world. This is really hard to do, particularly as an organisation. It needs to reinvent yourself from scratch. It means killing your org to live again.

The org will fight it. People that were favored will lose power and standing. They will fight it. Things will get worse before getting better. They will fight it. It will need different way to count success. That will be used against it. It will need new way to trust. They will say it is laxist.

Said otherwise: the current structure work good enough. There is not enough reward and competitive pressure to make the huge opportunity cost of change an accepted strategy.

You can apply that model of change infinitely. Ask yourself why we have not seen huge swath of the web move into Elixir as an example.

This resonates with me.

I've experienced a few "agile transformations". They almost never stuck. The thing that mostly worked was creating teams with a majority of experienced agile devs, people willing to self improve and execute. And when the job is over, it all starts falling apart. Some team members might be believers now, they become disillusioned and leave. Some might have been good followers, but quickly conform to the old ways. You only have a temporary influence on a single team or project. You can't change a company's culture like that, without it hitting rock bottom first. This is very similar to overcoming addiction.

I've long wondered why NUMMI worked where others failed, something I believe is largely ignored in most literature: the factory closed. All the workers were out of a job for several weeks. And in comes Toyota with jobs for many workers, with the hopes of giving every single worker their job back.

What did succeed, is to create what he called a "new building", meaning a new subcompany (sometimes literally in a new building) with a different (agile) culture, and only letting in people that are interested in making it work. Slowly let the old company die, the new one grow. It takes years and years.

It's not a secret. Many other organizations (not in F1, by your description) operate this way. It's well understood, but...

> Why aren't more teams copying this?

... everyone on the team needs to buy in to this approach. One selfish team member can slowly ruin the whole thing.

The uncomfortable reality of these cultures is that when someone in the culture is not truly committed, or is putting their self-interest ahead of the team, they need to be removed. A lot of leaders are not strong enough to recognize that and take action.

They also have a budget of close to $500 million, which can't hurt. Ferrari and Red Bull are the only teams that come close to that.

Fourth largest budget is Renault at almost $200 million less.

We'll see if they continue to stack up with the $175 million budget cap that's coming in 2021.

Because the psychological Traits and Needs of all humans are not the same.

Most people who build teams have a sense of their own Needs and Traits and pick strategies/team members that align/compensate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_NEO_Personality_Invent...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

There is a distribution of Traits/Needs that you need to be aware of within any population, group, team etc.

If you are not aware of those variations and randomly create groups and try to impose strategy, what works and fails will always remain mysterious.

And then Lewis would be gone and we would just be losers.

Is this not an extension of "we win as a team, we lose as a team"? Would this be possible with the same consistency in teams where both drivers are in clear competition with each other for the seat next season?

If you want to see what the same management style looks like with competitive drivers, you can just look at the last time Mercedes had two competitive drivers. That would be in 2016, when Nico Rosberg won the drivers championship with Mercedes. The relationship between Hamilton and Rosberg had become so toxic, that Toto Wolf himself admitted he had no idea how he was going to solve it. It culminated with Hamilton trying his best to hold up Rosberg in traffic in the last race of 2016, because Hamilton needed to keep Rosberg of the Podium if he was going to get the title. You can watch the highlights on YouTube with the team telling him to speed up, while he more or less just refused. The only reason any of that was resolved, was because Rosberg retired after that season.

This story is pretty much repeated in F1 history any time you have two people on the same team competing for the title. Last year LeClerc and Vettel fought so much, and so dangerously on track, that it actually led to both Ferrari drivers crashing into each other and retiring in one race (something which mirrors one of the most controversial crashes in F1 history, when one McLaren teammate crashed into the other at Suzuka in 1989). The entire season was also full of their drivers arguing on the radio about team orders. Then you have the other most dominant driver, Verstappen, who Redbull have been unable to find a suitable teammate for.

To specifically answer your questions, at Mercedes “win as a team” clearly always means “help Hamilton win”. It’s not possible to operate a team where drivers are not fighting for their seat, and history has shown it’s not possible to have a good team culture when both drivers are actually competing with each other for the title.

Mercedes had to protect themselves from this and made the smart choice in choosing Bottas as he was well known for a calm and team focused demeanor. With Bottas, Mercedes could further build the team around Hamilton without causing issues between the drivers.

It would've been really interesting to see the team structure if Rosberg returned in 2017. Mercedes dodged a bullet by getting Bottas at the right time.

Is it fair? No. Drivers like Barrichello and Massa never got a title, while arguably they are champion-level drivers. I think Bottas is someone in that position right now.

The other question is would you rather be in Bottas' shoes of being on the top team but the number 2 driver, or like Ricciardo or Hulkenberg which are also top tier drivers but haven't had a clear shot to compete or even the chance to get a podium for the latter. Motorsports (and Formula 1) is a cruel world.

Redbull haven’t really resolved this problem though. Max obviously has championship potential, and is their number one driver. But they haven’t managed to find a suitable teammate for him. They need their own Bottas. A driver who is comfortable being the number 2, but talented enough to lock out the front row and consistently get on the podium with Max. They’ve found good personality fits (Albon is perfect in that respect), but haven’t found anybody who is also talented enough to give Redbull constructor potential.

That said, I really like Bottas, and I think it’s sad he doesn’t have a shot at fighting for the championship. His performance at CotA last year was amazing, and it felt great to watch him really race Hamilton (though the team arguably gave Bottas a safer strategy in this case).

Ricciardo made the same move Lewis did, and the delay in the new regulation opens up opportunity for him. How good or what could it be is very uncertain, though. I think he's very unfortunate in timing; I think he would take the chance of the Mercedes seat if he weren't in contract at that time. And if he knows McLaren were moving to Mercedes engine, he might consider that too. Nobody knows what Renault showed him that made him sign though. Or maybe $80M can wipe that pain away..

It definitely helps :)

Drivers will always be pitted against their teammate though. F1 is technically a team sport, but the real judgement for the drivers is how well they compare against their teammate. Each driver wants to win, that's why they compete.